Gilpin, Stephen

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Gilpin, Stephen

Personal

Married; wife's name Krista; children: four. Education: New York School of Visual Arts, B.F.A. (with honors). Hobbies and other interests: Walks on the beach, gardening, bag piping.

Addresses

Home and office—Tulsa, OK. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Artist and children's book illustrator.

Illustrator

John Hall, Mickey McGuffin's Ear, White Stone Books (Lakeland, FL), 2005.

William Boniface, The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy, Book One: The Hero Revealed, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.

Deborah Underwood, Pirate Mom, Random House (New York, NY), 2006.

John Hall, How to Get a Gorilla out of Your Bathtub, Harrison House (Tulsa, OK), 2006.

John Hall, What If I Pulled This Thread?, Harrison House (Tulsa, OK), 2006.

Eric A. Kimmel, adaptor, The Three Cabritos, Marshall Cavendish (New York, NY), 2007.

Wendi Silvano, Magnetic Mixables: A Princess Mess, Innovative Kids (Norwalk, CT), 2007.

William Boniface, The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy, Book Two: The Return of Meteor Boy?, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2007.

Sidelights

Stephen Gilpin was raised in small-town Kansas, but moved to the East Coast to attend the New York School of Visual Arts. While as an artist, he developed an interest in abstract expressionism, Gilpin has also cultivated a career as a children's book illustrator, creating cartoon-like images for a variety of children's titles that often incorporate a humorous tone. For example, Gilpin's illustrations for Deborah Underwood's Pirate Mom wittily detail the misadventures of a little boy and his piratical mother. Pete is a fanatic of pirates and always wants to mimic the rogue adventurers, but his mother never wants to play along. In an attempt to distract her son from his pirate games, Pete's mother takes him to see a magician's performance. When she is chosen by the performing magician to be part of his onstage hypnosis act, Pete is thrilled when his mom is hypnotized to think that she is a pirate. When a family emergency causes the magician to suddenly abandon his act before returning Pete's mom to normal, a series of amusing mishaps ensue. According to a Kirkus Reviews critic, Gilpin's "appealingly cartoony illustrations suit the silly fun" of Underwood's text, while Carolyn Phelan wrote in Booklist that the illustrator's use of "clean lines, muted colors, and comic-style exaggeration of the characters' features," effectively bring Pirate Mom to life.

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 2006, Carolyn Phelan, review of Pirate Mom, p. 94; June 1, 2006, Ed Sullivan, review of The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy: Book One, The Hero Revealed, p. 67.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2006, review of Pirate Mom, p. 418; June 1, 2006, review of The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy: Book One, The Hero Revealed, p. 568.

School Library Journal, June, 2006, Walter Minkel, review of The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy: Book One, The Hero Revealed, p. 146; September, 2006, Susan Lissim, review of Pirate Mom, p. 186.